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Language: English
by
HILAIRE BELLOC
DEDICATION
KINGS LAND,
SHIPLEY, HORSHAM.
_October 14, 1917._
MY DEAR ORAGE,
I dedicate this little essay to you not only because "The New Age"
(which is your paper) published it in its original form, but much more
because you were, I think, the pioneer, in its modern form at any
rate, of the Free Press in this country. I well remember the days when
one used to write to "The New Age" simply because one knew it to be
the only paper in which the truth with regard to our corrupt politics,
or indeed with regard to any powerful evil, could be told. That is now
some years ago; but even to-day there is only one other paper in
London of which this is true, and that is the "New Witness." Your
paper and that at present edited by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton are the
fullest examples of the Free Press we have.
Things happen because of words printed in "The New Age" and the "New
Witness." That is less and less true of what I have called the
official press. The phenomenon is worth analysing. Its intellectual
interest alone will arrest the attention of any future historian. Here
is a force numerically quite small, lacking the one great obvious
power of our time (which is the power to bribe), rigidly boycotted--so
much so that it is hardly known outside the circle of its immediate
adherents and quite unknown abroad. Yet this force is doing work--is
creating--at a moment when almost everything else is marking time; and
the work it is doing grows more and more apparent.
The reason is, of course, the principle which was a commonplace with
antiquity, though it was almost forgotten in the last modern
generation, that truth has a power of its own. Mere indignation
against organized falsehood, mere revolt against it, is creative.
It is the thesis of this little essay, as you will see, that the Free
Press will succeed in its main object which is the making of the truth
known.
But I have lived, in the last five years, to see that this mood was
false. It is now clear that steady work in the exposure of what is
evil, whatever forces are brought to bear against that exposure, bears
fruit. That is the reason I have written the few pages printed here:
To convince men that even to-day one can do something in the way of
political reform, and that even to-day there is room for something of
free speech.
I say at the close of these pages that I do not believe the new spirit
we have produced will lead to any system of self-government, economic
or political. I think the decay has gone too far for that. In this I
may be wrong; it is but an opinion with regard to the future. On the
other matter I have experience and immediate example before me, and I
am certain that the battle for free political discussion is now won.
Mere knowledge of our public evils, economic and political, will
henceforward spread; and though we must suffer the external
consequences of so prolonged a regime of lying, the lies are now known
to be lies. True expression, though it should bear no immediate and
practical fruit, is at least now guaranteed a measure of freedom, and
the coming evils which the State must still endure will at least not
be endured in silence. Therefore it was worth while fighting.
These things appeared first of all in England, because England was the
only province of Europe wherein the old Latin tradition ran side by
side with the novel effects of protestantism. But for England the
great schism and heresy of the sixteenth century, already dissolving
to-day, would long ago have died. It would have been confined for
some few generations to those outer Northern parts of the Continent
which had never really digested but had only received in some
mechanical fashion the strong meat of Rome. It would have ceased with,
or shortly after, the Thirty Years War.
It was the defection of the English Crown, the immense booty rapidly
obtained by a few adventurers, like the Cecils and Russells, and a
still smaller number of old families, like the Howards, which put
England, with all its profound traditions and with all its organic
inheritance of the great European thing, upon the side of the Northern
Germanies. It was inevitable, therefore, that in England the fruits
should first appear, for here only was there deep soil.
That fruit upon which our modern observation has been most fixed was
_Capitalism_.
Another cognate fruit was what to-day we call _Finance_, that is, the
domination of the State by private Capitalists who, taking advantage
of the necessities of the State, fix an increasing mortgage upon the
State and work perpetually for fluidity, anonymity, and
irresponsibility in their arrangements. It was in England, again, that
this began and vigorously began with what I think was the first true
"National Debt"; a product contemporary in its origins with industrial
Capitalism.
Another was that curious and certainly ephemeral vagary of the human
mind which has appeared before now in human history, which is called
"Sophistry," and which consists in making up "systems" to explain the
world; in contrast with Philosophy which aims at the answering of
questions, the solution of problems and the final establishment of the
truth.
But most interesting of all just now, though but a minor fruit, is the
thing called "The Press." It also began to arise contemporaneously
with Capitalism and Finance: it has grown with them and served them.
It came to the height of its power at the same modern moment as did
they.
II
First, of News:--
News, that is, information with regard to those things which affect us
but which are not within our own immediate view, is necessary to the
life of the State.
If we want to know what to think of a fire which has taken place many
miles away, but which affects property of our own, we listen to the
accounts of dozens of men. We rapidly and instinctively differentiate
between these accounts according to the characters of the witnesses.
Equally instinctively, we counter-test these accounts by the inherent
probabilities of the situation.
An honest and sober man tells us that the roof of the house fell in.
An imaginative fool, who is also a swindler, assures us that he later
saw the roof standing. We remember that the roof was of iron girders
covered with wood, and draw this conclusion: That the framework still
stands, but that the healing fell through in a mass of blazing
rubbish. Our common sense and our knowledge of the situation incline
us rather to the bad than to the good witness, and we are right. But
the Press cannot of its nature give a great number of separate
testimonies. These would take too long to collect, and would be too
expensive to collect. Still less is it able to deliver the weight of
each. It, therefore, presents us, even at its best when the testimony
is not tainted, no more than one crude affirmation. This one relation
is, as I have said, further propagated unanimously and with extreme
rapidity. Instead of an organic impression formed at leisure in the
comparison of many human sources, the reader obtains a mechanical one.
At the same moment myriads of other men receive this same impression.
Their adherence to it corroborates his own. Even therefore when the
disseminator of the news, that is, the owner of the newspaper, has no
special motive for lying, the message is conveyed in a vitiated and
inhuman form. Where he has a motive for lying (as he usually has) his
lie can outdo any merely spoken or written truth.
III
Further the mass of men, though there was more intelligent reading
(and writing, for that matter) than there is to-day, had not acquired
the habit of daily reading.
It may be doubted whether even to-day the mass of men (in the sense of
the actual majority of adult citizens) have done so. But what I mean
is that in the time of which I speak (the earlier part, and a portion
of the middle, of the nineteenth century), there was no reading of
papers as a regular habit by those who work with their hands. The
papers were still in the main written for those who had leisure; those
who for the most part had some travel, and those who had a smattering,
at least, of the Humanities.
The matter appearing in the newspapers was often _written by_ men of
less facilities. But the people who wrote them, wrote them under the
knowledge that their audience was of the sort I describe. To this day
in the healthy remnant of our old State, in the country villages, much
of this tradition survives. The country folk in my own neighbourhood
can read as well as I can; but they prefer to talk among themselves
when they are at leisure, or, at the most, to seize in a few moments
the main items of news about the war; they prefer this, I say, as a
habit of mind, to the poring over square yards of printed matter which
(especially in the Sunday papers) are now food for their fellows in
the town. That is because in the country a man has true neighbours,
whereas the towns are a dust of isolated beings, mentally (and often
physically) starved.
IV
But it was clear that this was bound to lead to the paradoxical state
of affairs from which we began to suffer in the later nineteenth
century. A paper had for its revenue not only what people paid in
order to obtain it, but also what people paid in order to get their
wares or needs known through it. It, therefore, could be profitably
produced at a cost greater than its selling price. Advertisement
revenue made it possible for a man to print a paper at a cost of 2d.
and sell it at 1d.
In the simple and earlier form of advertisement the extent and nature
of the circulation was the only thing considered by the advertiser,
and the man who printed the newspaper got more and more profit as he
extended that circulation by giving more reading matter for a
better-looking paper and still selling it further and further below
cost price.
When it was discovered how powerful the effect of suggestion upon the
readers of advertisements could be, especially over such an audience
as our modern great towns provide (a chaos, I repeat, of isolated
minds with a lessening personal experience and with a lessening
community of tradition), the value of advertising space rapidly rose.
It became a more and more tempting venture to "start a newspaper," but
at the same time, the development of capitalism made that venture more
and more hazardous. It was more and more of a risky venture to start a
new great paper even of a local sort, for the expense got greater and
greater, and the loss, if you failed, more and more rapid and serious.
Advertisement became more and more the basis of profit, and the giving
in one way and another of more and more for the 1d. or the 1/2d.
became the chief concern of the now wealthy and wholly capitalistic
newspaper proprietor.
As with patent medicines so with any other matter whatsoever that was
advertised. However bad, shoddy, harmful, or even treasonable the
matter might be, the proprietor was always at the choice of publishing
matter which did not affect _him_, and saving his fortune, or refusing
it and jeopardizing his fortune. He chose the former course.
Not only was there this negative power in the hands of the advertiser,
that of refusing the favour or patronage of his advertisements, there
was also a positive one, though that only grew up later.
The advertiser came to see that he could actually dictate policy and
opinion; and that he had also another most powerful and novel weapon
in his hand, which was the _suppression_ of news.
We must not exaggerate this element. For one thing the power
represented by the great Capitalist Press was a power equal with that
of the great advertisers. For another, there was no clear-cut
distinction between the Capitalism that owned newspapers and the
Capitalism that advertised. The same man who owned "The Daily Times"
was a shareholder in Jones's Soap or Smith's Pills. The man who
gambled and lost on "The Howl" was at the same time gambling and
winning on a bucket-shop advertised in "The Howl." There was no
antagonism of class interest one against the other, and what was more
they were of the same kind and breed. The fellow that got rich quick
in a newspaper speculation--or ended in jail over it--was exactly the
same kind of man as he who bought a peerage out of a "combine" in
music halls or cut his throat when his bluff in Indian silver was
called. The type is the common modern type. Parliament is full of it,
and it runs newspapers only as one of its activities--all of which
need the suggestion of advertisement.
The newspaper owner and the advertiser, then, were intermixed. But on
the balance the advertising interest being wider spread was the
stronger, and what you got was a sort of imposition, often quite
conscious and direct, of advertising power over the Press; and this
was, as I have said, not only negative (that was long obvious) but, at
last, positive.
But there is now a graver corruption at work even than this always
negative and sometimes positive power of the advertiser.
It is the chief political event of our time and is the peculiar mark
of this country to-day. Its full development has come on us suddenly
and taken us by surprise in the midst of a terrible war. It was
undreamt of but a few years ago. It is already to-day the capital fact
of our whole political system. A Prime Minister is made or deposed by
the owner of a group of newspapers, not by popular vote or by any
other form of open authority.
How did such a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire
into before going further to examine its operation and the possible
remedy.
VI
During all this development of the Press there has been present,
_first_, as a doctrine plausible and arguable; _next_, as a tradition
no longer in touch with reality; _lastly_, as an hypocrisy still
pleading truth, a certain definition of the functions of the Press; a
doctrine which we must thoroughly grasp before proceeding to the
nature of the Press in these our present times.
This doctrine was that the Press was an _organ of opinion_--that is,
an expression of the public thought and will.
Why was this doctrine originally what I have called it, "plausible and
arguable"? At first sight it would seem to be neither the one nor the
other.
But there is no smoke without fire, and the element of truth in the
legend that the Press "represents" opinion lies in this, that there is
a _limit_ of outrageous contradiction to known truths beyond which it
cannot go without heavy financial loss through failure of circulation,
which is synonymous with failure of power. When people talked of the
newspaper owners as "representing public opinion" there was a shadow
of reality in such talk, absurd as it seems to us to-day. Though the
doctrine that newspapers are "organs of public opinion" was (like
most nineteenth century so-called "Liberal" doctrines) falsely stated
and hypocritical, it had that element of truth about it--at least, in
the earlier phase of newspaper development. There is even a certain
savour of truth hanging about it to this day.
Newspapers are only offered for sale; the purchase of them is not (as
yet) compulsorily enforced. A newspaper can, therefore, never succeed
unless it prints news in which people are interested and on the nature
of which they can be taken in. A newspaper can manufacture interest,
but there are certain broad currents in human affairs which neither a
newspaper proprietor nor any other human being can control. If England
is at war no newspaper can boycott war news and live. If London were
devastated by an earthquake no advertising power in the Insurance
Companies nor any private interest of newspaper owners in real estate
could prevent the thing "getting into the newspapers."
In a word, the Press must always largely deal with what are called
"living issues." It can _boycott_ very successfully, and does so, with
complete power. But it cannot artificially create unlimitedly the
objects of "news."
There is, then, this much truth in the old figment of the Press being
"an organ of opinion," that it must in some degree (and that a large
degree) present real matter for observation and debate. It can and
does select. It can and does garble. But it has to do this always
within certain limitations.
VII
Here, again, we are dealing with something very different indeed from
that title "An organ of opinion" to which the large newspaper has in
the past pretended. But I am arguing for the truth that the Press--in
the sense of the great Capitalist newspapers--cannot be wholly
divorced from opinion.
We have had three great examples of this in our own time in England.
Two proceeded from the small wealthy class, and one from the mass of
the people.
The two proceeding from the small wealthy classes were the Fabian
movement and the movement for Women's Suffrage. The one proceeding
from the populace was the sudden, brief (and rapidly suppressed)
insurrection of the working classes against their masters in the
matter of Chinese Labour in South Africa.
It was the same with the Suffrage for Women, which cry a clique of
wealthy ladies got up in London. I have never myself quite understood
why these wealthy ladies wanted such an absurdity as the modern
franchise, or why they so blindly hated the Christian institution of
the Family. I suppose it was some perversion. But, anyhow, they
displayed great sincerity, enthusiasm, and devotion, suffering many
things for their cause, and acting in the only way which is at all
practical in our plutocracy--to wit, by making their fellow-rich
exceedingly uncomfortable. You may say that no one newspaper took up
the cause, but, at least, it was not boycotted. It was actively
discussed.
The little flash in the pan of Chinese Labour was, I think, even more
remarkable. The Press not only had word from the twin Party Machines
(with which it was then allied for the purposes of power) to boycott
the Chinese Labour agitation rigidly, but it was manifestly to the
interest of all the Capitalist Newspaper Proprietors to boycott it,
and boycott it they did--as long as they could. But it was too much
for them. They were swept off their feet. There were great meetings in
the North-country which almost approached the dignity of popular
action, and the Press at last not only took up the question for
discussion, but apparently permitted itself a certain timid support.
My point is, then, that the idea of the Press as "an organ of public
opinion," that is, "an expression of the general thought and will," is
not _only_ hypocritical, though it is _mainly_ so. There is still
something in the claim. A generation ago there was more, and a couple
of generations ago there was more still.
Even to-day, if a large paper went right against the national will in
the matter of the present war it would be ruined, and papers which
supported in 1914 the Cabinet intrigue to abandon our Allies at the
beginning of the war have long since been compelled to eat their
words.
For the strength of a newspaper owner lies in his power to deceive the
public and to withhold or to publish at will hidden things: his power
in this terrifies the professional politicians who hold nominal
authority: in a word, the newspaper owner controls the professional
politician because he can and does blackmail the professional
politician, especially upon his private life. But if he does not
command a large public this power to blackmail does not exist; and he
can only command a large public--that is, a large circulation--by
interesting that public and even by flattering it that it has its
opinions reflected--not created--for it.
The power of the Press is not a direct and open power. It depends upon
a trick of deception; and no trick of deception works if the trickster
passes a certain degree of cynicism.
We must, therefore, guard ourselves against the conception that the
great modern Capitalist Press is _merely_ a channel for the
propagation of such news as may suit its proprietors, or of such
opinions as they hold or desire to see held. Such a judgment would be
fanatical, and therefore worthless.
VIII
There is no one in public life but could give dozens of examples from
his own experience of perfectly sensible letters to the Press, citing
irrefutable testimony upon matters of the first importance, being
refused publicity. Within the guild of the journalists, there is not a
man who could not give you a hundred examples of deliberate
suppression and deliberate falsehood by his employers both as regards
news important to the nation and as regards great bodies of opinion.
We are, indeed, long past the time when the professional politicians
were treated as revered beings of whom an inept ritual description had
to be given. But the substitute has only been a putting of them into
the limelight in another and more grotesque fashion, far less
dignified, and quite equally false.
We cannot even say that the professional politicians are still made to
"fill the stage." That metaphor is false, because upon a stage the
audience knows that it is all play-acting, and actually _sees_ the
figures.
Let any man of reasonable competence soberly and simply describe the
scene in the House of Commons when some one of the ordinary
professional politicians is speaking.
Once let the public know what sort of mediocrities the politicians are
and they lose power. Once let them lose power and their hidden masters
lose power.
Take a larger instance: the middle and upper classes are never allowed
by any chance to hear in time the dispute which leads to a strike or a
lock-out.
Let no one say that the disgusting falsehoods spread by the Press in
this respect were of no effect The men themselves gave in, and their
perfectly just demands were defeated, mainly because middle-class
opinion _and a great deal of proletarian opinion as well_ had been led
to believe that the builders' cessation of labour was a _strike_ due
to their own initiative against existing conditions, and thought the
operation of such an initiative immoral in time of war. They did not
know the plain truth that the provocation was the masters', and that
the men were turned out of employment, that is deprived of access to
the Capitalist stores of food and all other necessaries, wantonly and
avariciously by the masters. The Press would not print that enormous
truth.
The whole of England was concerned during the second year of the War
with the first rise in the price of food. There was no man so rich but
he had noticed it in his household books, and for nine families out of
ten it was the one pre-occupation of the moment. I do not say the
great newspapers did not deal with it, but _how_ did they deal with
it? With a mass advocacy in favour of this professional politician or
that; with a mass of unco-ordinated advices; and, above all, with a
mass of nonsense about the immense earnings of the proletariat. The
whole thing was really and deliberately side-tracked for months until,
by the mere force of things, it compelled attention. Each of us is a
witness to this. We have all seen it. Every single reader of these
lines knows that my indictment is true. Not a journalist of the
hundreds who were writing the falsehood or the rubbish at the
dictation of his employer but had felt the strain upon the little
weekly cheque which was his _own_ wage. Yet this enormous national
thing was at first not dealt with at all in the Press, and, when dealt
with, was falsified out of recognition.
I could give any number of other, and, perhaps, minor instances as the
times go (but still enormous instances as older morals went) of the
same thing. They have shown the incapacity and falsehood of the great
capitalist newspapers during these few months of white-hot crisis in
the fate of England.
This is not a querulous complaint against evils that are human and
necessary, and therefore always present. I detest such waste of
energy, and I agree with all my heart in the statement recently made
by the Editor of "The New Age" that in moments such as these, when any
waste is inexcusable, sterile complaint is the _worst_ of waste. But
my complaint here is not sterile. It is fruitful. This Capitalist
Press has come at last to warp all judgment. The tiny oligarchy which
controls it is irresponsible and feels itself immune. It has come to
believe that it can suppress any truth and suggest any falsehood. It
governs, and governs abominably: and it is governing thus in the midst
of a war for life.
IX
The regime under which we are now living is that of a Plutocracy which
has gradually replaced the old Aristocratic tradition of England.
This Plutocracy--a few wealthy interests--in part controls, in part is
expressed by, is in part identical with the professional politicians,
and it has in the existing Capitalist Press an ally similar to that
"Official Press" which continental nations knew in the past. But there
is this great difference, that the "Official Press" of Continental
experiments never consisted in more than a few chosen organs the
character of which was well known, and the attitude of which
contrasted sharply with the rest. But _our_ "official Press" (for it
is no less) covers the whole field. It has in the region of the great
newspapers no competitor; indeed, it has no competitors at all, save
that small Free Press, of which I shall speak in a moment, and which
is its sole antagonist.
There has not been such a case for at least twenty years. The current
simulacrum of criticism apparently attacking some portion of the
regime, never deals with matters vital to its prestige. On the
contrary, it deliberately side-tracks any vital discussion that
sincere conviction may have forced upon the public, and spoils the
scent with false issues.
One paper, not a little while ago, was clamouring against the excess
of lawyers in Government. Its remedy was an opposition to be headed by
a lawyer.
Another was very serious upon secret trading with the enemy. It
suppressed for months all reference to the astounding instance of that
misdemeanour by the connections of a very prominent professional
politician early in the war, and refused to comment on the single
reference made to this crime in the House of Commons!
I say that the big daily papers have now not only those other
qualities dangerous to the State which I have described, but that they
have become essentially "official," that is, insincere and corrupt in
their interested support of that plutocratic complex which, in the
decay of aristocracy, governs England. They are as official in this
sense as were ever the Court organs of ephemeral Continental
experiments. All the vices, all the unreality, and all the peril that
goes with the existence of an official Press is stamped upon the great
dailies of our time. They are not independent where Power is
concerned. They do not really criticize. They serve a clique whom they
should expose, and denounce and betray the generality--that is the
State--for whose sake the salaried public servants should be
perpetually watched with suspicion and sharply kept in control.
They are beginning to feel a certain uneasiness. They know that their
old power of observation over public servants has slipped from them.
They suspect that the known gross corruption of Public life, and
particularly of the House of Commons, is entrenched behind a
conspiracy of silence on the part of those very few who have the power
to inform them. But, as yet, they have not passed the stage of such
suspicion. They have not advanced nearly as far as the discovery of
the great newspaper owners and their system. They are still, for the
most part, duped.
* * * * *
Here I touch the core of my matter. Side by side with what I have
called "the Official Press" in our top-heavy plutocracy there has
arisen a certain force for which I have a difficulty in finding a
name, but which I will call for lack of a better name "the Free
Press."
I might call it the "independent" Press were it not that such a word
would connote as yet a little too much power, though I do believe its
power to be rising, and though I am confident that it will in the near
future change our affairs.
I am not acquainted with any other modern language than French and
English, but I read this Free Press French and English, Colonial and
American regularly and it seems to me the chief intellectual
phenomenon of our time.
In France and in England, and for all I know elsewhere, there has
arisen in protest against the complete corruption and falsehood of
the great Capitalist papers a crop of new organs which _are_ in the
strictest sense of the word "organs of Opinion." I need not detain
English readers with the effect of this upon the Continent. It is
already sufficiently noteworthy in England alone, and we shall do well
to note it carefully.
"The New Age" was, I think, the pioneer in the matter. It still
maintains a pre-eminent position. I myself founded the "Eye-Witness"
in the same chapter of ideas (by which I do not mean at all with
similar objects of propaganda). Ireland has produced more than one
organ of the sort, Scotland one or two. Their number will increase.
With this I pass from the just denunciation of evil to the exposition
of what is good.
The rise of what I have called "The Free Press" was due to a reaction
against what I have called "The Official Press." But this reaction was
not single in motive.
Three distinct moral motives lay behind it and converged upon it. We
shall do well to separate and recognize each, because each has had
it's effect upon the Free Press as a whole, and that Free Press bears
the marks of all three most strongly to-day.
The first motive apparent, coming much earlier than either of the
other two, was the motive of (A) _Propaganda_. The second motive was
(B) _Indignation against the concealment of Truth_, and the third
motive was (C) _Indignation against irresponsible power_: the sense of
oppression which an immoral irresponsibility in power breeds among
those who are unhappily subject to it.
XI
The motive of Propaganda (which began to work much the earliest of the
three) concerned Religions, and also certain racial enthusiasms or
political doctrines which, by their sincerity and readiness for
sacrifice, had half the force of Religions.
Men found that the great papers (in their final phase) refused to talk
about anything really important in Religion. They dared do nothing but
repeat very discreetly the vaguest ethical platitudes. They hardly
dared do even that. They took for granted a sort of invertebrate
common opinion. They consented to be slightly coloured by the
dominating religion of the country in which each paper happened to be
printed--and there was an end of it.
Great bodies of men who cared intensely for a definite creed found
that expression for it was lacking, even if this creed (as in France)
were that of a very large majority in the State. The "organs of
opinion" professed a genteel ignorance of that idea which was most
widespread, most intense, and most formative. Nor could it be
otherwise with a Capitalist enterprise whose directing motive was not
conversion or even expression, but mere gain. There was nothing to
distinguish a large daily paper owned by a Jew from one owned by an
Agnostic or a Catholic. Necessity of expression compelled the creation
of a Free Press in connection with this one motive of religion.
Men came across very little of this in England, because England was
for long virtually homogeneous in religion, and that religion was not
enthusiastic during the years in which the Free Press arose. But such
a Free Press in defence of religion (the pioneer of all the Free
Press) arose in Ireland and in France and elsewhere. It had at first
no quarrel with the big official Capitalist Press. It took for granted
the anodyne and meaningless remarks on Religion which appeared in the
sawdust in the Official Press, but it asserted the necessity of
specially emphasizing its particular point of view in its own columns:
for religion affects all life.
A generation ago and more, great numbers of men were persuaded that a
solution for the whole complex of social injustice was to be found in
what they called "nationalizing the means of production, distribution,
and exchange." That is, of course, in plain English, putting land,
houses, and machinery, and stores of food and clothing into the hands
of the politicians for control in use and for distribution in
consumption.
This creed was held with passionate conviction by men of the highest
ability in every country of Europe; and a Socialist Press began to
arise, which was everywhere free, and soon in active opposition to the
Official Press. Again (of a religious temper in their segregation,
conviction and enthusiasm) there began to appear (when the oppressor
was mild), the small papers defending the rights of oppressed
nationalities.
Religion, then, and cognate enthusiasms were the first breeders of the
Free Press.
The first Propagandists, then, did not stand up to the Official Press
as equals. They crept in as inferiors, or rather as open ex-centrics.
For Victorian England and Third Empire France falsely proclaimed the
"representative" quality of the Official Press.
To the honour of the Socialist movement the Socialist Free Press was
the first to stand up as an equal against the giants.
Though, however, certain of the Socialist Free Papers thus boldly took
up a standpoint of moral equality with the others, their attitude was
exceptional. Most editors or owners of, most writers upon, the Free
Press, in its first beginnings, took the then almost universal point
of view that the great papers were innocuous enough and fairly
represented general opinion, and were, therefore, not things to be
specifically combated.
The great Dailies were thought grey; not wicked--only general and
vague. The Free Press in its beginnings did not attack as an enemy. It
only timidly claimed to be heard. It _regarded itself_ as a
"speciality." It was humble. And there went with it a mass of
ex-centric stuff.
If one passes in review all the Free Press journals which owed their
existence in England and France alone to this motive of Propaganda,
one finds many "side shows," as it were, beside the main motives of
local or race patriotism, Religion, or Socialist conviction. You
have, for instance, up and down Europe, the very powerful and
exceedingly well-written anti-Semitic papers, of which Drumont's
"Libre Parole" was long the chief. You have the Single-tax papers. You
have the Teetotal papers--and, really, it is a wonder that you have
not yet also had the Iconoclasts and the Diabolists producing papers.
The Rationalist and the Atheist propaganda I reckon among the
religious.
We may take it, then, that Propaganda was, in order of time, the first
motive of the Free Press and the first cause of its production.
I mean that the Free Press has had stamped upon it the character of
_disparate particularism_.
The Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections,
for it is _disparate_ and it is _particularist_: it is marked with
isolation--and it is so marked because its origin lay in various and
most diverse _propaganda_: because it came later than the official
Press of Capitalism, and was, in its origins, but a reaction against
it.
Men gradually came to notice that one thing after another of great
public interest, sometimes of vital public interest, was deliberately
suppressed in the principal great official papers, and that positive
falsehoods were increasingly suggested, or stated.
There was more than this. For long the _owner_ of a newspaper had for
the most part been content to regard it as a revenue-producing thing.
The _editor_ was supreme in matters of culture and opinion. True, the
editor, being revocable and poor, could not pretend to full political
power. But it was a sort of dual arrangement which yet modified the
power of the vulgar owner.
The editor became (and now is) a mere mouthpiece of the proprietor.
Editors succeed each other rapidly. Of great papers to-day the
editor's name of the moment is hardly known--but not a Cabinet
Minister that could not pass an examination in the life, vices,
vulnerability, fortune, investments and favours of the owner. The
change was rapidly admitted. It came quickly but thoroughly. At
last--like most rapid developments--it exceeded itself.
Men owning the chief newspapers could be heard boasting of their power
in public, as an admitted thing; and as this power was recognized, and
as it grew with time and experiment, it bred a reaction.
Why should this or that vulgarian (men began to say) exercise (and
boast of!) the power to keep the people ignorant upon matters vital to
us all? To distort, to lie? The sheer necessity of getting certain
truths told, which these powerful but hidden fellows refused to tell,
was a force working at high potential and almost compelling the
production of Free Papers side by side with the big Official ones.
That is why you nearly always find the Free Press directed by men of
intelligence and cultivation--of exceptional intelligence and
cultivation. And that is where it contrasts most with its opponents.
But only a little later than this second motive of indignation against
falsehood and acting with equal force (though upon fewer men) was the
third motive of _freedom_: of indignation against _arbitrary Power_.
For men who knew the way in which we are governed, and who recognized,
especially during the last twenty years, that the great newspaper was
coming to be more powerful than the open and responsible (though
corrupt) Executive of the country, the position was intolerable.
The knowledge that this was so provided the third, and, perhaps, the
most powerful motive for the creation of a Free Press.
Unfortunately, it could affect only very few men. With the mass even
of well-educated and observant men the feeling created by the novel
power of the great papers was little more than a vague ill ease. They
had a general conception that the owner of a widely circulated popular
newspaper could, and did, blackmail the professional politician: make
or unmake the professional politician by granting or refusing him the
limelight; dispose of Cabinets; nominate absurd Ministers.
But the particular, vivid, concrete instances that specially move men
to action were hidden from them. Only a small number of people were
acquainted with such particular truths. But that small number knew
very well that we were thus in reality governed by men responsible to
no one, and hidden from public blame. The determination to be rid of
such a secret monopoly of power compelled a reaction: and that
reaction was the Free Press.
XII
Such being the motive powers of the Free Press in all countries, but
particularly in France and England, where the evils of the Capitalist
(or Official) Press were at their worst, let us next consider the
disabilities under which this reaction--the Free Press--suffered.
(1) In the first place, the free journals suffered from the difficulty
which all true reformers have, that they have to begin by going
against the stream.
Let us consider first the main four points. When we have examined them
all we shall see against what forces, and in spite of what negative
factors, the Free Press has established itself to-day.
I say that in the first place the Free Press, being a reformer,
suffered from what all reformers suffer from, to wit, that in their
origins they must, by definition, go against the stream.
The official Capitalist Press round about them had already become a
habit when the Free Papers appeared. Men had for some time made it a
normal thing to read their daily paper; to believe what it told them
to be facts, and even in a great measure to accept its opinion. A new
voice criticizing by implication, or directly blaming or ridiculing a
habit so formed, was necessarily an unpopular voice with the mass of
readers, or, if it was not unpopular, that was only because it was
negligible.
This first disability, however, under which the Free Press suffered,
and still suffers, would not naturally have been of long duration. The
remaining three were far graver. For the mere inertia or counter
current against which any reformer struggles is soon turned if the
reformer (as was the case here) represented a real reaction, and was
doing or saying things which the people, had they been as well
informed as himself, would have agreed with. With the further
disabilities of (2) particularism, (3) poverty, (4) insufficiency (to
which I add, in this country, restraint by the political lawyers), it
was otherwise.
Take the Marconi case. The big official papers first boycotted it for
months, and then told a pack of silly lies in support of the
politicians. The Free Press gave one the truth but its various organs
gave the truth for very different reasons and with very different
impressions. To some of the Irish papers Marconi was a comic episode,
"just what one expects of Westminster"; others dreaded it for fear it
should lower the value of the Irish-owned Marconi shares. "The New
Age" looked at it from quite another point of view than that of the
"New Witness," and the specifically Socialist Free Press pointed it
out as no more than an example of what happens under Capitalist
Government.
My point is, then, that the Free Press thus starting from so many
different particular standpoints has not yet produced a general organ;
by which I mean that it has not produced an organ such as would
command the agreement of a very great body of men, should that very
great body of men be instructed on the real way in which we are
governed.
Charles Maurras is one of the most powerful writers living, and when
he points out in the "Action Fran�aise" that the French Supreme Court
committed an illegal action at the close of the Dreyfus case, he is
doing useful work, for he is telling the truth on a matter of vital
public importance. But when he goes on to say that such a thing would
not have occurred under a nominal Monarchy, he is talking nonsense.
Any one with the slightest experience of what the Courts of Law can be
under a nominal Monarchy shrugs his shoulders and says that Maurras's
action may have excellent results, but that his proposed remedy of
setting up one of these modern Kingships in. France in the place of
the very corrupt Parliament is not convincing.
In a word, the Free Press all over the world, as far as I can read it,
suffers from this note of particularity, and, therefore, of isolation
and strain. It is not of general appeal.
In connection with this disability you get the fact that the Free
Press has come to depend upon individuals, and thus fails to be as yet
an institution. It is difficult, to see how any of the papers I have
named would long survive a loss of their present editorship. There
might possibly be one successor; there certainly would not be two; and
the result is that the effect of these organs is sporadic and
irregular.
There are some men (and I count myself one) who will read anything,
however much they differ from its tone and standpoint, in order to
obtain more knowledge. I am not sure that it is a healthy habit. At
any rate it is an unusual one. Most men will only read that which,
while informing them, takes for granted a philosophy more or less
sympathetic with their own. The Free Press, therefore, so long as it
springs from many and varied minorities, not only suffers everywhere
from an audience restricted in the case of each organ, but from
preaching to the converted. It does get hold of a certain outside
public which increases slowly, but it captures no great area of public
attention at any one time.
3
The third group of disabilities, as I have said, attaches to the
economic weakness of the Free Press.
Stupidity, for instance, would account for the great advertisers not
advertising articles of luxury in a paper with only a three thousand a
week circulation, even if that paper were read from cover to cover by
all the rich people in England; but it would not account for absence
_in the Free Press alone_ of advertisements appearing in every other
kind of paper, and in many organs of far smaller circulation than the
Free Press papers have.
The occasional articles in the Free Press have the same mark of high
value, but it is not regular: and, meanwhile, hardly one of the Free
Papers pays its way.
Fourthly, but also partly economic, there is the impediment the Free
Press suffers of imperfect information. It will print truths which the
Great Papers studiously conceal, but daily and widespread information
on general matters it has great difficulty in obtaining.
Most of the official papers, for instance, were informed of the Indian
Silver scandal by the culprits themselves in a fashion which
forestalled attack. Those who led the attack groped in the dark.
Now the Lawyers' Guild has latterly become (to its own hurt as it will
find) hardly distinguishable from the complex of professional
politics.
One need not be in Parliament many days to discover that most laws are
made and all revised by members of this Guild. Parliament is, as a
drafting body, virtually a Committee of Lawyers who are indifferent to
the figment of representation which still clings to the House of
Commons.
It should be added that this part of their work is honestly done, that
the greatest labour is devoted to it, and that it is only consciously
tyrannical or fraudulent when the Legal Guild feels _itself_ to be in
danger.
But far more important than the legislative power of the Legal Guild
(which is now the chief framer of statutory law as it has long been
the _salutary_ source of common law) is its executive or governing
power.
You may, of course, commit any crime with impunity if the professional
politicians among the lawyers refuse to prosecute. But that is only a
negative evil. More serious is the positive side of the affair: that
you may conversely be put at the _risk_ of any penalty if they desire
to put you at that risk; for the modern secret police being ubiquitous
and privileged, their opponent can be decoyed into peril at the will
of those who govern, even where the politicians dare not prosecute him
for exposing corruption.
Once the citizen has been put at this peril--that is, brought into
court before the lawyers--whether it shall lead to his actual ruin or
no is again in the hands of members of the legal guild; the judge
_may_ (it has happened), withstand the politicians (by whom he was
made, to whom he often belongs, and upon whom his general position
to-day depends). He _may_ stand out, or--as nearly always now--he will
identify himself with the political system and act as its mouthpiece.
When the judge lends himself to the politicians we all know what
follows.
Even in the case of so glaring an abuse, with which the whole country
is now familiar, we must not exaggerate. It would still be impossible
for the politicians, for instance, to get a verdict during war in
favour of an overt act of treason. But after all, argument of this
sort applies to any tyranny, and the power the politicians have and
exercise of refusing to prosecute, however clear an act of treason or
other grossly unpopular act might be, is equivalent to a power of
acquittal.
The lawyers decide in the last resort on the freedom of speech and
writing among their fellow-citizens, and as their Guild is now
unhappily intertwined with the whole machinery of Executive
Government, we have in modern England an executive controlling the
expression of opinion. It is absolute in a degree unknown, I think, in
past society.
XIII
My reasons for forming this judgment are based not only upon the
observation of others but upon my own experience.
I knew how my own paper could not but appear particular and personal,
and could not but suffer from that eccentricity to general opinion of
which I have spoken. I had a half-tragic and half-comic experience of
the economic difficulty; of the difficulty of obtaining information;
of the difficulty in distribution, and all the rest of it. The editor
of "The New Age" could provide an exactly similar record. I had
experience, and after me Mr. Cecil Chesterton had experience, of the
threats levelled by the professional politicians and their modern
lawyers against the free expression of truth, and I have no doubt that
the editor of "The New Age" could provide similar testimony. As for
the Free Press in Ireland, we all know how _that_ is dealt with. It is
simply suppressed at the will of the police.
XIV
The first thing to note is that the Free Press is not read
perfunctorily, but with close attention. The audience it has, if
small, is an audience which never misses its pronouncements whether it
agrees or disagrees with them, and which is absorbed in its opinions,
its statement of fact and its arguments. Look narrowly at History and
you will find that all great _reforms_ have started thus: not through
a widespread control acting downwards, but through spontaneous energy,
local and intensive, acting upwards.
You cannot say this of the Official Press, for the simple reason that
the Official Press is only of real political interest on rare and
brief occasions. It is read of course, by a thousand times more people
than those who read the Free Press. But its readers are not gripped by
it. They are not, save upon the rare occasions of a particular "scoop"
or "boom," _informed_ by it, in the old sense of that pregnant word,
_informed_:--they are not possessed, filled, changed, moulded to new
action.
XV
Next let it be noted that the Free Press powerfully affects, even when
they disagree with it, and most of all when they hate it, the small
class through whom in the modern world ideas spread.
There never was a time in European history when the mass of people
thought so little for themselves, and depended so much (for the
ultimate form of their society) upon the conclusions and vocabulary of
a restricted leisured body.
But there are a number of tests which show how deeply the effect of a
Free Paper of limited circulation bites in. Here is one apparently
superficial test, but a test to which I attach great importance
because it is a revelation of how minds work. Certain phrases peculiar
to the Free Journals find their way into the writing of all the rest.
I could give a number of instances. I will give one: the word
"profiteer." It was first used in the columns of "The New Age," if I
am not mistaken. It has gained ground everywhere. This does not mean
that the mass of the employees upon daily papers understand what they
are talking about when they use the word "profiteer," any more than
they understand what they are talking about when they use the words
"servile state." They commonly debase the word "profiteer" to mean
some one who gets an exceptional profit, just as they use my own
"Eye-Witness" phrase, "The Servile State," to mean strict regulation
of all civic life--an idea twenty miles away from the proper
signification of the term. But my point is that the Free Press must
have had already a profound effect for its mere vocabulary to have
sunk in thus, and to have spread so widely in the face of the rigid
boycott to which it is subjected.
XVI
XVII
Next consider this powerful factor in the business. _The truth
confirms itself._
Well, the false, the ludicrously false picture designed to put this
politician in the limelight (as against favours to be rendered), no
doubt remains the general impression with most of those 500,000
people. The simple and rather tawdry truth may be but doubtfully
accepted by a few hundreds only.
If they had not read anything suggesting the truth, it is quite upon
the cards that the false suggestion would still have weight with
them, in spite of the evidence of their senses. Men are so built that
uncontradicted falsehood sufficiently repeated does have that curious
power of illusion. A man having heard the speech delivered by the old
gentleman, if there were nothing but the Official Press to inform
opinion, might go away saying to himself: "I was not very much
impressed, but no doubt that was due to my own weariness. I cannot but
believe that the general reputation he bears is well founded. He must
be a great orator, for I have always heard him called one."
But a man who has even once seen it stated that this politician was
_exactly what he was_ will vividly remember that description (which at
first hearing he probably thought false); physical experience has
confirmed the true statement and made it live. These statements of
truth, even when they are quite unimportant, more, of course, when
they illuminate matters of great civic moment, have a cumulative
effect.
This salutary truth had been arrived at, of course, by many other
channels. The scandalous arrangement between the Front Benches which
forced the Insurance Act down our throats was an eye-opener for the
great masses of the people. So was the cynical action of the
politicians in the matter of Chinese Labour after the Election of
1906. So was the puerile stage play indulged in over things like the
Welsh Disestablishment Bill and the Education Bills.
But among the forces which opened people's eyes about the House of
Commons, the Free Press played a very great part, though it was never
mentioned in the big Official papers, and though not one man in many
hundreds of the public ever heard of it. The few who read it were
startled into acceptance by the exact correspondence between its
statement and observed fact.
The man who tells the truth when his colleagues around him are lying,
always enjoys a certain restricted power of prophecy. If there were a
general conspiracy to maintain the falsehood that all peers were over
six foot high, a man desiring to correct this falsehood would be
perfectly safe if he were to say: "I do not know whether the _next_
peer you meet will be over six foot or not, but I am pretty safe in
prophesying that you will find, among the next dozen three or four
peers less than six foot high."
A worthy provincial might have been shocked ten years ago to hear that
places in the Upper House of Parliament were regularly bought and
sold. He might have indignantly denied it The Free Press said: "In
some short while you will have a glaring instance of a man who is
incompetent and obscure but very rich, appearing as a legislator with
permanent hereditary power, transferable to his son after his death. I
don't know which the next one will be, but there is bound to be a case
of the sort quite soon for the thing goes on continually. You will be
puzzled to explain it. The explanation is that the rich man has given
a large sum of money to the needy professional politician, Selah."
Our worthy provincial may have heard but an echo of this truth, for it
would have had, ten years ago, but few readers. He may not have seen a
syllable of it in his daily paper. But things happen. He sees first a
great soldier, then a well-advertised politician, not a rich man, but
very widely talked about, made peers. The events are normal in each
case, and he is not moved. But sooner or later there comes a case in
which he has local knowledge. He says to himself: "Why on earth is
So-and-so made a peer (or a front bench man, or what not)? Why, in the
name of goodness, is this very rich but unknown, and to my knowledge
incompetent, man suddenly put into such a position?" Then he remembers
what he was told, begins to ask questions, and finds out, of course,
that money passed; perhaps, if he is lucky, he finds out which
professional politician pouched the money--and even how much he took!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A friend of mine in the Press Gallery used to represent "I have
yet to learn that the Government" by a little twirl, and "What did the
right honourable gentleman do, Mr. Speaker? He had the audacity" by
two spiral dots.
XVIII
The effect of the Free Press from all these causes may be compared to
the cumulative effect of one of the great offensives of the present
war. Each individual blow is neither dramatic nor extensive in effect;
there is little movement or none. The map is disappointing. But each
blow tells, and _when the end comes_ every one will see suddenly what
the cumulative effect was.
There is not a single thing which the Free Papers have earnestly said
during the last few years which has not been borne out by events--and
sometimes borne out with astonishing rapidity and identity of detail.
XIX.
It is an old tag that the paradox of one age is the commonplace of the
next, and that tag is true. It is true, because young men are doubly
formed. First, by the reality and freshness of their own experience,
and next, by the authority of their elders.
You see the thing in the reputation of poets. For instance, when A is
20, B 40, and C 60, a new poet appears, and is, perhaps, thought an
eccentric. "A" cannot help recognizing the new note and admiring it,
but he is a little ashamed of what may turn out to be an immature
opinion, and he holds his tongue, "B" is too busy in middle life and
already too hardened to feel the force of the new note and the
authority he has over "A" renders "A" still more doubtful of his own
judgment. "C" is frankly contemptuous of the new note. He has sunk
into the groove of old age.
Now let twenty years pass, and things will have changed in this
fashion. "C" is dead. "B" has grown old, and is of less effect as an
authority. "A" is himself in middle age, and is sure of his own taste
and not prepared to take that of elders. He has already long expressed
his admiration for the new poet, who is, indeed, not a "new poet" any
longer, but, perhaps, already an established classic.
We are all witnesses to this phenomenon in the realm of literature. I
believe that the same thing goes on with even more force in the realm
of political ideas.
Can any one conceive the men who were just leaving the University five
or six years ago returning from the war and still taking the House of
Commons seriously? I cannot conceive it. As undergraduates they would
already have heard of its breakdown; as young men they knew that the
expression of this truth was annoying to their elders, and they always
felt when they expressed it--perhaps they enjoyed feeling--that there
was something impertinent and odd, and possibly exaggerated in their
attitude. But when they are men between 30 and 40 they will take so
simple a truth for granted. There will be no elders for them to fear,
and they will be in no doubt upon judgments maturely formed. Unless
something like a revolution occurs in the habits and personal
constitution of the House of Commons it will by that time be a joke
and let us hope already a partly innocuous joke.
The Courts, after all, depend largely upon the mass of opinion. Twenty
years ago, for instance, an accusation of bribery brought against some
professional politician would have been thought a monstrosity, and,
however true, would nearly always have given the political lawyers,
his colleagues, occasion for violent repression. To-day the thing has
become so much a commonplace that all appeals to the old illusion
would fall flat. The presiding lawyer could not put on an air of
shocked incredulity at hearing that such-and-such a Minister had been
mixed up in such-and-such a financial scandal. We take such things
for granted nowadays.
XX
It will succeed at last in getting the truth told pretty openly and
pretty thoroughly. It will break down the barrier between the little
governing clique in which the truth is cynically admitted and the bulk
of educated men and women who cannot get the truth by word of mouth
but depend upon the printed word. We shall, I believe, even within the
lifetime of those who have taken part in the struggle; have all the
great problems of our time, particularly the Economic problems,
honestly debated. But what I do not see is the avenue whereby the
great mass of the people can now be restored to an interest in the way
in which they are governed, or even in the re-establishment of their
own economic independence.
So far as I can gather from the life around me, the popular appetite
for freedom and even for criticism has disappeared. The wage-earner
demands sufficient and regular subsistence, including a system of
pensions, and, as part of his definition of subsistence and
sufficiency, a due portion of leisure. That he demands a property in
the means of production, I can see no sign whatever. It may come; but
all the evidence is the other way. And as for a general public
indignation against corrupt government, there is (below the few in the
know who either share the swag or shrug their shoulders) no sign that
it will be strong enough to have any effect.
I shall do so, and the others who continue in like service will do so,
_first_, because, though the work is so far negative only, there is
(and we all instinctively feel it), a _Vis Medicatrix Natur�_: merely
in weakening an evil you may soon be, you ultimately will surely be,
creating a good: _secondly_, because self-respect and honour demand
it. No man who has the truth to tell and the power to tell it can long
remain hiding it from fear or even from despair without ignominy. To
release the truth against whatever odds, even if so doing can no
longer help the Commonwealth, is a necessity for the soul.
We have also this last consolation, that those who leave us and attach
themselves from fear or greed to the stronger party of dissemblers
gradually lose thereby their chance of fame in letters. Sound writing
cannot survive in the air of mechanical hypocrisy. They with their
enormous modern audiences are the hacks doomed to oblivion. We, under
the modern silence, are the inheritors of those who built up the
political greatness of England upon a foundation of free speech, and
of the prose which it begets. Those who prefer to sell themselves or
to be cowed gain, as a rule, not even that ephemeral security for
which they betrayed their fellows; meanwhile, they leave to us the
only solid and permanent form of political power, which is the gift of
mastery through persuasion.
"If the flush and beauty of health in this volume are not speedily
propagated among the race, books are not worth reading."--DAILY
CHRONICLE.
After-War Problems
BY THE LATE EARL OF CROMER, VISCOUNT
HALDANE, THE BISHOP OF EXETER,
PROF. ALFRED MARSHALL, AND OTHERS
EDITED BY WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON
_Demy 8vo._ SECOND IMPRESSION. _7s. 6d. net. Postage 6d._
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